Things You'll Be Needin'
by Amanda McWilliams-May
Summary: Rose talks the Doctor into stopping at her mum's for some innocent shopping and chips, but Jackie is convinced Rose needs to go to the chemist's for contraception, which both Rose and the Doctor are forced to vigorously deny.


"Love's, Baby, Soft," she repeated for him, a bit louder and clearer this time.

"Sounds awful," he replied. His voice, muffled and annoyed, came up from below her where he was working on a tangled mess of wires under the grating.

"Well I fancy it, and I've used up the last." Rose was perched on the edge of his battered captain's jump seat, painting her toe nails, just finishing up the left foot in fact. She was folded forward over it, concentrating on where it was propped up on the Tardis' central console. She began blowing air through her lips back and forth across her toes, wiggling them, to encourage them to start drying.

"I'm almost out of varnish now, too. And I'll be needing some more shampoo."

The Doctor popped his head up from the floor and gave her now more-pink-than-ever foot a disgusted look. "Do ya have t' do that in 'ere?" he gruffed.

Ignoring his question, but a little proud of herself for finally capturing his full attention, she asked, "So, can we?"

Feigning ignorance he ducked back under the grate. "Can we what?" he asked, grunting as he began banging on something, a bit harder than was necessary, Rose thought.

"Can we stop at my mum's? Just so I can pop 'round the chemist's, then maybe... have some chips?" She knew that might perk his big ears up. "We don't have to stay long."

Heaving a deep sigh he rose out from the floor and replaced the grating. He stood and threw both arms up over his head. "I surrender," he said. "But two hours, that's my limit," he admonished her, bringing down one hand between them, and holding up two long, adamant fingers in front of her. "Two." He flipped his hand back and forth to show her what both sides of the number two looked like.

"You're on," she grinned.

As the Doctor began setting the Tardis controls, Rose swapped feet. She gave her bottle a vigorous shake, trying to stir up the last treasured bit of her "Promises, Promises Pink" varnish.

He stepped over her and held out his hand, waggling for the bottle. "Allow me," he said.

Amused, Rose handed it over and settled back to watch him expertly paint her toes. He moved quickly and precisely with the cap's little brush, making small smooth strokes, with a concentration usually reserved for his most complex repairs to the Tardis.

"Right, now both feet up, as you please, Miss Tyler." Rose complied. Reaching into his leather jacket's inside breast pocket, he brought out his sonic screwdriver. With a flick of its controls he waved it back and forth over her toes a few times to dry and set the colour, then resheathed it.

"All done," he said, popping a grin.

Smiling back, she teased him, "Y' should've enrolled in Beauty College."

He gave her a smirk and teased back,"What makes you think I didn't?"

The Doctor turned his attention to his console. With a few spins of two or three dials and one good, hard "thwack" with a rubber mallet he kept handy for that purpose, he flew the Tardis, then landed her with a flurry of last-second frenetic two-handed button-pushing.

Rose pulled on her trainers and bounced to her feet, practically skipping to the doors. As he pushed them open for her he paused and sternly warned her again. "Two hours."

"Rose!" Jackie Tyler called out, throwing her arms open as she sprinted joyfully toward her daughter. Rose fell into her embrace. "I heard the engines and I came down straight away. I'm so glad you're home, love."

Holding her Rose tightly, not wanting to let her go, Jackie looked over at the Doctor, and with a pointed stare, asked, "So, how long can you stay for?"

The Doctor started to answer, but before he could get his tongue up to his teeth to form the letter "T" as in "Two," Rose cheerily replied, "We've come to spend the day with you, Mum!"

"Oh," said Jackie, a bit deflated. Releasing her arms from around Rose, Jackie turned and started walking them back across the dreary concrete courtyard that passed for recreational space in the estate. Throwing a glare back at the Doctor, she commented, "Lucky me."

Following along behind, pretending to be cheerful about it when Rose turned to look at him, the Doctor climbed the stairs with them up to the tiny flat where Rose had lived.

As she walked in, Rose felt like she was slipping on an old, favorite jumper, but one that had begun to grow a bit tight. "Mum, I'm going to need a few things from the chemist's," she said, and headed to her old bedroom.

"Do you, now," Jackie answered, trying to keep her voice light as she moved into the kitchen to put the kettle on for some tea. She was beginning to feel an edge of anxiety creep in. Things from the chemist...

"We figured on taking you out for chips after," Rose called from her room, as she went over to her dresser and began rummaging through one of its drawers.

The Doctor folded himself up in her doorway and leaned, watching her dig around in more drawers then move into her closet. To the right of her dresser, next to her mirror, an image tacked to the wall caught his eye. Moving over to have a look, he saw it was an advert she'd ripped from a magazine, its once-glossy colours now fading.

A barely adolescent girl, with poofy hair and too much eye shadow, in a ridiculously frilly top, was posed with a large roan-coloured stallion, canoodling with it over a white picket fence. The beast's head was lowered into her hands, in a gesture of complete tameness. Below the photograph was featured a blatantly phallic, outrageously phallic, really, bottle of perfume. The bottle was a perfect cylinder, with a good bit of girth and a nicely proportional length, pink of course, with a tall bullet-shaped white cap. "The Nicest Things Happen in Love's Baby Soft," the text proclaimed, "Because Innocence is Sexier Than You Think."

Good Gods. He cleared his throat and declared, loudly, "I'm going back to the Tardis. You'll not be needin' me. Come an' fetch me when it's chips." Pounding back down the stairs he grumbled to himself that next time he took on a traveling companion, it was going to be someone more grown up, someone less, attractive, definitely someone who didn't need to go running back to her mother to go cosmetics shopping.

Rose backed out of her closet with a few warm winter things she'd been missing, and looked round just in time to see the front door click shut. She shook her head and silently mouthed the word, _Rude_.

After swapping a few stories and hearing the local gossip over a couple of mugs of tea (her mum's was always the best), Rose and Jackie headed out to catch the bus to their local Boots.

Sliding together into a seat on the bottom deck, Jackie started quizzing Rose. "Now what do you need that you have to come all the way to Peckham? Not that I mind, I'm so happy you did, sweetheart. But don't they have shampoo and toothbrushes up there?" she asked, gesturing towards the sky. "Or can't he just zap you something, like with a transporter, they always have one of those on a spaceship."

"Shhh, mum, keep your voice down, and no, he can't just zap things, it's not Star Trek, it's real," Rose replied, getting irritated. "Look, don't worry about it, it's just some stuff I can't get anywhere but here. It's nice to have some familiar things, stuff that reminds me of home..."

Rose went quiet and scrunched up in her seat, leaning her head against the window. She seemed to Jackie to be suddenly somewhere far, far away. Rose felt a few slow tears well up, from an emotion she wasn't expecting to feel today. It was sadness, kind of like homesickness, she thought, but it wasn't, because when you're homesick you want to go back home, and stay there, and never leave again...

"Sweetheart, I know you must miss me sometimes, and I miss you. You can always come home anytime, your room is waitin', just like you left it." After a moment of silence, Jackie's tone turned quieter and more serious. "Rose, I need to ask you something, it's important." Waiting until her daughter looked at her, she continued. "This trip to the chemist, is contraception one of the things you need to buy?" She stared at her daughter deeply, her eyes asking Rose to be honest, just once, about was actually going on in her relationship with this strange man who looked at least twice her age, up to god knows what, getting dragged god knows where .

"No, mum, I've told you, it's not like that, we're not doing anything." Rose felt like she'd had this conversation so many times already, she might as well have tape recorded it and left her mother a copy to play back. Rose turned to her window again and suddenly seem very engrossed in the passing scenery, chewing on her bottom lip.

Jackie sighed, lifting and dropping her hands into her lap with a slap in a gesture of exasperated defeat, and looked away from Rose out of the windows on the other side of the bus. They rode the rest of the way in silence.

At Boots, Rose was delighted to find all sorts of things she hadn't known she needed, but now wanted. The mother and daughter enjoyed browsing together, picking up cartons of bath soaks and packets of mud from the Dead Sea ("Good for the complexion," Jackie noted), hand creams, nail files and vitamins ("You really might want these out there, who knows what kind of exotic colds you could catch if you get run down," Jackie commented).

At the perfume counter, Rose looked up and down for a few minutes, then tried the lotions aisle again, before saying, "I can't find any Love's Baby Soft body spray."

A clerk passing by heard the remark and came over to reply. "Sorry, miss, we quit carrying it. I believe it's no longer being manufactured. Again, sorry."

"Aww, that's a shame. But thanks." Rose looked down into her cart and realized if she bought much more stuff, there'd be no way to get it all back to the estate, anyways. "I think this is plenty, best stop here," she said.

Jackie told her she had one more thing to look for, and that Rose should go ahead to the checkout. After unloading her things onto the counter, as she waited her turn behind another customer, she picked up a current tabloid. Checking out nude, blurry photos of minor European royalty on the deck of a speedboat somewhere in the Mediterranean almost made her miss Jackie sidling up and trying to sneak a large blue box into her things.

Rose whisked up the package. "Durex Comfort XL, 72 Extra Large Condoms," it read.

"Bloody hell, what did I already say!" Rose thrust the box back at her mother. "I don't need 'em, and even if I did, what on earth makes you think he needs 'Extra Large' anyways, that's disgustin', and seventy-two of 'em, what's wrong with you, you think I'm some kind of nymphomaniac?"

"Well he's quite a large bloke, ain't he?" Jackie exclaimed. "And 'Extra Large' might not be quite as digustin' as you make out," Jackie said with smirk. "Or needin' seventy-two of 'em."

"Jesus, mum. Put 'em back!"

"No, leave 'em, I might need 'em, 'cause you never know." Jackie winked and gave Rose a nudge with her elbow. "Maybe I'll get lucky this year. I'll throw in for 'em, just leave 'em."

Rose let out an exasperated grumble but let it go.

Back at the estate, Rose finished packing up the first gym bag she'd started with and then had to go get a second, until she finally fit in all her things. With relief she saw her mother take the absurdly large box of absurdly large condoms and remove them from Rose's room, without any more discussion about sex and the Doctor.

"I'm gonna go down and fetch him, and then we'll head off to the chippy, eh?" Rose called out after her.

"OK, love," Jackie replied.

Rose was in a light mood again, and she skipped down the stairs, then broke into a run all the way back to the Tardis. She arrived flushed, with her hair all blown about, and barreled through the doors. "Doctor, time for tea! And tea means CHIPS!" she yelled out gleefully.

"Rose, hello," the Doctor greeted her, just walking back in from somewhere down the corridors. "Where's your things?"

"Still up at the flat, all packed. Didn't think to bring 'em down. Come on, help me carry 'em now, then when we're done at the chippy we can come straight here, not have to drag it out with mum."

"I'm all in for that," the Doctor muttered. He followed Rose back to the flat and then into her room, where he let her take the smaller of the two bags and hefted the other over his shoulder.

"Blimey, what's in this?" he asked. "Feels like iridium. Good stuff, iridium, one of the most corrosion-resistant metals you can find, but hard to mine. Highly siderophile, iridium is. Any planet with active tectonics, it's all sunk to the core."

Rose giggled. "Just stuff."

The three stepped out together and Jackie locked up. "Not coming back here, then, are you," Jackie half-asked, half-commented.

"Now mum, none of that, I'll be back for another visit soon and I'll call you, yeah?" Rose replied.

Jackie glumly followed them to the Tardis and waited outside at a distance while the pair of them went in to drop Rose's things. Did Rose even have her own room? Or did she sleep with-him-Jackie didn't want to think about it.

They came back out, arm in arm, smiling at one another, thick as thieves, those two, thought Jackie. No way she could compete with that. She couldn't, nothing on Earth could, really.

At the chippy they sat down in a big booth and tucked into chips for all (the Doctor had added a bowl of curry sauce, and two steak and kidney pies for himself, which had prompted Jackie to quietly comment to Rose, "See, I told you, he's a big bloke,") with tea for Jackie and Rose and a dandelion and burdock for the Doctor.

Jackie thankfully kept herself to pleasant topics, and the Doctor seemed docile enough. With an end to this visit in sight, he was willing to play at being polite while he filled his stomach up with steamy, heavy food. Rose started to relax, realizing how much she enjoyed having both of them with her, these two people she cared about more than anyone else in the world. In the universe, she corrected herself. A whole universe.

She was taken over by an abrupt urge to leap up and race back to the Tardis, excitedly thinking that just a few hours from now, they could be somewhere so different, so mind-blowingly alien and mysterious - who knew where they'd be this time tomorrow. "We've got to start shoving off, mum," Rose said.

"Oh, so soon?" Jackie pouted. Then turning stern, she said, "Before you go wanderin' off again, I have something t' say, and I want you two to just sit tight and keep both your mouths shut and hear me out."

"No, mum, seriously, don't start," Rose groaned.

"No, you're both gonna listen," Jackie said sternly, and shaking her index finger with growing vigour at the Doctor, she launched in. "Now my Rose insists there's nothing romantic goin' on 'tween the two of you's, but I'm warning you right now, Doctor, if things end up gettin' out of hand and Rose here gets in deeper than she's bargainin' for, if you think you can just show up back here one day to dump her off nine months gone, and us with no way of findin' you again, and me endin' up being a grandmum with some half-green baby with tentacles instead of arms, then you had best think again, because I-"

"MUM!" Rose cried, trying to stop her rant before it got any more insulting to her friend.

The Doctor's ears turned a colour of purple usually associated with sunsets on Apalapucia, and a stunned look quickly turned to sharp anger.

"Dammit, woman," he cried, banging down both fists, rattling the plates and splattering crumbs and leftover droplets of tea across the table. It also gathered the attention of everyone in the shop. "FOR THE LAST TIME, I AM NOT HAVING SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH YOUR DAUGHTER!"

Rose let herself slide down on her bench until only her forehead still showed, diving away from the curious looks that were coming their way now, and the snickers from behind the counter, plus one spirited "Atta boy!" from some youth at another table.

Jackie sat, stunned into silence by his outburst, then she suddenly relaxed, looking relieved. "Really, you really mean that?" she asked.

"Really," the Doctor replied, his voice at its most sarcastic, arms folded, head tilted, giving her his best condescending smirk.

"Well, that's a relief, sorry, but you know, she's all I've got, she's my daughter, and..." Jackie paused a moment.

Her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth began to drift into a scowl. As she looked across at that cocky, I'm-such-a-clever-alien, the alien that had stolen her daughter, she felt a sense of outrage building, until she blurted out, "Well why in heaven's name NOT? Why aren't you interested in her? WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY ROSE?"

"I'm not havin' this conversation," the Doctor growled, and he was up and out onto the sidewalk in a second, striding away.

"Thanks a lot, mum, now I have to go try and catch him. Seriously, what were you thinkin'?!" Rose cried, and making her mother get out of her way she ran out after the one thing she knew she needed. Not home, not her mum, not nail varnish. It was him, she had to go with him, there wasn't anywhere else to go anymore, not for her.

"Doctor, Doctor, wait!" she called to him, trying to close up the distance he'd already gotten with his head start.

Hands shoved deep into his jeans pockets, his broad shoulders hunched over as he still stalked on, glaring at the ground in front of him, he slowed up a little but he didn't turn around.

"DOCTOR!" That made him stop. Rose ran up to his side and panting, said, "Look I'm really sorry, she's such an idiot, she had no right to embarrass us like that, I've been telling her all day to stop."

He didn't say anything, but turned back toward the Tardis, and allowed her to fall in next to him, walking at a calmer pace now.

"Seriously, she's an idiot," Rose repeated.

"Nope, she's your mum," he replied, evenly.

"Yeah, guess she is," Rose said, and they went on without speaking.

As they crossed the last hundred yards to their blue box, their home, Rose thought, a derisive catcall rang out across the court. "Oi, Blondie, heading for a bit of How's-Your-Father-_with_ yer father?" Self-congratulating cackling ensued.

"Leave it," Rose said, as she sensed the Doctor tensing up, ready to turn and pound some heads.

"Everybody better NEB OFF OR I'll BRAY 'EM!" he shouted out behind him as he stormed the final few feet to and through the Tardis doors.

Much later, after several soothing hours of banging on random things with an increasingly large assortment of spanners, and listening to Rose apologise three more times, and hearing her promise to never, ever make him spend time with her mother again, and then after she told him three really good alien jokes (including "How were the Daleks defeated at breakfast? They were egg-sterminated!"), he was ready to forget the whole thing.

Rose's gym bags still lay on the floor by the Tardis doors, where they had dropped them earlier, on their way out for chips. Offering her an olive branch, he motioned to them with his head and asked, "Why don't you let me help you put your things away?"

In her room, Rose unzipped the first bag and let him watch her pull out a selection of t-shirts, knitted fingerless mitts, a few warm scarves and a cabled ear flap pointed ski hat with fuzzy pompoms all over it that the Doctor thought might make her head look a bit like a Silurian baby's, but a lot less green, of course.

Tucking the things neatly into her dresser drawers, she turned and told him, "You can just drop the other bag in the ensuite, it's all beauty stuff."

The Doctor hefted it onto her long vanity counter, and still thinking it must be filled with iridium, unzipped it to take a peek.

There on the top was a large box: "Durex Comfort XL, 72 Extra Large Condoms."

"Good Gods," he whispered.


End file.
